"We've got to fight tooth and nail," said Adora Bey nee Pinch. "So we might as well plan the campaign."

I must have looked excessively blank as I stood in the door to my room in my bathrobe, for Adora turned a beady eye on me. It was not a good sign. She pointed at a chair. "Sit down, husband," she ordered.

I sat down.

"Nothing like breaking things gently," she said to me. "We have it all planned out. Next week, we are going to start converting homos."

"Men?" I said.

"That's right," she said primly. "Unless we do the other half of the job, we'll get nowhere. Those (bleeps) have been trained by the psychiatrists into fellatio and sodomy. They're just a bunch of chauvinistic (bleep) holes! And that's where you come in."

"Hold on!" I said. "I don't want anything to do with homos! They completely nauseate me. I factually get ill just thinking about it."

"Oh, come now. All you have to do is combine it with the anti-lesbian campaign: just let the homos stand around and watch and see how good it is."

"No WAY!" I cried. "They might get worked up and grab me and rape me in the (bleep). No, Madame Pinch Bey. The answer is NO! That's final. Count me out. That's the end of it. No use talking. Get a gun. Shoot me. Turn me in for bigamy. But on homos, you can go straight to Hells."

She looked at me in a very deadly fashion, eyes slit­ted. She could never abide anyone disagreeing. "I thought it might come to this. I've heard you on the sub­ject before. So I took precautions. I have something to show you." She snapped her fingers: "The large envelope, Candy."

Candy handed it over. As she opened it, Adora said, "These just came back from a private lab." She held them up.

They were ten-inch-by-twelve-inch color enlargements.

"These," said Adora, "are the photos Teenie took of you with Mike and you with Mildred. Beautiful color. They sure look lifelike, don't they? The flesh is just so natural!"

"What do these have to do with it?" I said suspiciously. "We were talking about homos and those are certainly women! Nobody could miss that fact or what was happening either. So what does this prove?"

"Nothing much. Only that you are a lecher." And then a glad and happy expression, very false, appeared upon her face. "But look at these!"

ME AND TEENIE!

In the first one, she had really been yanking me to my feet, but with the robe flying back that way it looked like I was attacking her!

"Now look at number two!" gloated Adora.

I had been trying to bat her hands away but it looked like I was seizing her!

"Hold it!" I cried. "Those pictures are deceptive!"

"Oh, yeah?" gloated Adora. "Well, let's inspect number three!"

With a look of horror, Teenie seemed to be protesting a sexual attack. Actually, I had been trying to get her off of me!

"You like that, huh?" said Adora, gazing at my stricken face. "I think you'll really love number four. So realistic."

I stared. I said, my voice rising in pitch, "But she dropped down on her knees herself! I wasn't pushing her there! I was trying to get her to stand back up!"

"That's pretty juicy porno," Candy grinned, staring over my shoulder.

"Oh, but we're really not to it yet," said Adora. "Just look at number five!"

It showed Teenie tipped back on the bed! A look of fear was on her face. And that wasn't all it seemed to show.

"Hey!" I cried. "I was just trying to discipline her!"

"That's not what the picture shows!" smiled Adora ghoulishly. "But just get a look at number six!"

It showed her bent down on the bed. It showed me yanking her ponytail as she backed up against me.

"Now try to tell somebody," said Adora, "that you don't go in for sodomy."

"Wait!" I cried. "That camera is lying."

"Cameras never lie," said Adora. "The whole world believes in pictures."

"Rats!" I said. "You all saw it. You know very well that nothing whatever was happening! All that was going on was an effort to get her to behave!"

Adora smiled a deadly smile. "Well, it's certainly very plain from these pictures what you were doing, kiddo. Anybody looking at it would accept it as total evidence of what you were doing. That's why the FBI always uses pictures. The public and courts always believe cameras tell the truth. So just look at these again," and she fanned them out. "Here is clear-cut, court, FBI-type evidence of sexual attack, fellatio, sodomy and, in general, THE RAPE OF A MINOR!"

The shock hit me like a concussion wave. I went out like a blown candle.

Adora cuffed me awake. As though from a great distance, her voice was still hammering me. "The negatives are in a safe place. The new law is that you would be sterilized and probably die under the knife, and even if you survived you would go to jail for years and years and be raped there every day by the cons the way they do in Federal pens. There is no slightest way you could avoid being convicted of the charge of rape of a minor"

My brains were reeling. This was what was supposed to be happening to Heller. It was NOT what was supposed to be happening to me! How had Fate contrived this awful miscarriage of justice?

The room stopped spinning a trifle. Then a new fear gripped me. I stammered, "You... you haven't turned me in, have you?"

"No, not yet. But having some idea of how that peanut brain of yours works, I did take a precaution. Uncross your eyes and read this." She pushed something in front of my face. A legal paper:

SUPERIOR COURT INJUNCTION

Whereas and wherefore, the party of the first part, TEENIE WHOPPER, is a ward of this court, and whereas and wherefore the party of the second degree, SULTAN BEY, a.k.a. INKSWITCH, or of any other a.k.a. or name, is known to have reason to wish said party of the first part DEAD, the court hereby issues an injunction against the party of the second degree against the MURDER of said party of the first part.

Whereas and wherefore, if at any time the court demands it, the person of said TEENIE WHOPPER cannot be found or the said SULTAN BEY, a.k.a. INKSWITCH, or of any other a.k.a. or name, cannot produce the person of said party of the first part alive and well, within reasonable time, it will be automatically assumed by the court that the said party of the second degree has MURDERED the party of the first part and the party of the second degree shall be found guilty of MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

HAMMER TWIST

JUDGE

SUPERIOR COURT

I sat there trembling, fixated by that awful docu­ment. The most natural out, by all Apparatus textbooks, had been blocked!

IT WAS TOO LATE TO KILL TEENIE! I had missed my last chance!

"Please note," said Adora, "that I place the paper in your hand and that you have been legally served, a fact which will be carefully recorded in the court. This effectively ends any slightest choice you have in the matter. You WILL cooperate in de-homosexualizing homos. We begin this program next week. And you will do your part or go to a Federal pen and be raped daily by the male inmates. So in seven days we start, and there are no ifs, ands or buts.

"Now go take a shower and get ready for tonight's girls. You seem to be wringing wet with sweat and I detect a peculiar odor to you."

The peculiar odor was the raw, acrid stink of terror.

I knew at that moment, no matter how I dissimulated, I would have to flee. And I only had one week.

WHAT was I going to do in that week?

It required MAXIMUM STRIKE!

I had a terribly sleepless night. I rolled and tossed and cursed. Time after time I had had that (bleeped) kid right in my bare hands. I could have squeezed the life out of her with the ease of squashing putty.

But it was too late now. I couldn't touch the junior (bleepch)!